But I guess the question I have is, can it be stopped? And should it be stopped, even if we could?

It definitely cannot be stopped and I think the way where I've arrived at it is there's a sort of middle path for myself is it's something that's baked into the fabric of reality and so in the fabric of the reality of the universe.

So for us humans, it's the same as you need to breathe, you need to sleep, you need to metabolize.

It's these aspects of life that you can't deny their existence.

But at the same time, you can't be too okay with it.

There's no value in staring at a a contemplation of heat death or the second law of thermodynamics.

And the reason for that is really simple, is that even if you yourself become a chain-smoking, beret-wearing nihilist, and you're announcing all is lost, and even as you sit there in your Parisian cafe making these pronouncements, billions of cells inside your body are desperately trying to fight off, you know, degradation of the cell.

this tree this person next to me on the plane the plane itself this mountain that i'm looking at right i mean indeed everything is going to vanish and wouldn't we be better off if we embraced entropy instead of fighting it that in fact maybe we could find some kind of comfort in the fact that as your father said soon you won't remember this

Well, why don't you just do the reading, um, of a couple of information technologies, um, that, uh, are, or have been quite important in the world?

Sure.

Yeah, and just as, just as context, uh, you know, again, one of the goals was to jostle, uh, my students', uh, my readers' understanding of what counts as an information technology.

Right now, information technology has a very clean, sleek, kind of clinical idea.

And so one thing that had to be done in the book is just to make people realize just how strange [laughs] um, information technologies are.

So I, I...

The passage goes, um, as follows.

[laughs]

And I found that really odd.

That makes me so, I was, as you began to tell that story, I was getting very happy.

And I thought, what a lovely, you know, thing that technology enables.

And then boom, you brought down the, you brought the lever down.

No, no, someone asked, and I had a lovely conversation around the book in, And naturally, the question came up of what what strategies can one use to to stave this off? Or I think the better way to put it is how can we delay the inevitable? Because we have to remember, there's no bypassing the second law of thermodynamics.

There is no bypassing that story.

But.

And because of being a historian and all the historical research you've done over the years, did the loss of your own parents make you think differently about memory and legacy and things like that?

and the demographic changes that are currently underway in the united states and across the world is that a concern for you if you know there's population contraction over time that a lot of these things won't be properly uh preserved

yeah yeah i mean uh there are so these these kinds of These processes operate at every scale simultaneously, and there are linkages between all of these scalar levels.

So there is an element in which, someone asked me about the book, I think someone was maybe they were halfway through it or something and, you know, it, or maybe a third of the way through it and had asked about the, you know, where are we going with this? Like, is there a, is there a nihilism to this or is there a, you know, is there this, is there a despondence to it or what, you know, what happens if we sort of follow this to the logical conclusion? I said, you know, I said, I said, well, you know, Please, please, if you get a chance, read the rest of the book, because I think there is a fundamental optimism to it, which ties back to our earlier discussion of of um even without invocation of any religion or spirituality just the fundamental awe and miraculousness that stuff stays in any shape whatsoever like as a starting point of of okay now what but you had to start from that recognition some people would call it gratitude but whatever it is it's just awe and then you know then comes the next step um within any conversation.

But there is a fundamental, I think, lesson that I know I take with me, which is you've got to be okay and not okay with this at the same time.

You have to be okay with this and not okay with this at the same time.

So what do I mean by that? The second law...

There's no, there's no bypassing it.

if you decide to be intentional about it now.

But he's a historian.

No, it is, um...

So there's a, there's a, there's a, a, you know, song that maybe some, some of your listeners enjoy or on their playlist, Lust for Life.

Right? Iggy Pop, Lust for Life.

So this, like so many others songs of his- Is, is in, is in some way informed by a reflection on drug addiction and darkness and, and, and, and sadness and giddiness.

You know, think of Velvet Underground and, and these sorts of...

Or, or certain Eric Clapton songs.

What, what's the connection between technology then and memory, or technology and the absence of memory? It seems as if we have, the more technology we have, the less we remember.

And I was wondering if you could just talk a little about the kind of the technical definition of what information is and how it's related to entropy just to kind of get people into that frame to think about why the kind of the idea that you're getting at here is actually very central to what history is all about.

Sure.

So entropy is one of these moving targets that has in different arenas been defined in different ways.

And the story, and I think this has been validated, but it has that apocryphal quality, is that when Claude Shannon... uh is having a conversation on i and i'm trying to define this sort of measurement of uncertainty inside communication systems uh and uh it's recommended that he adopt the term entropy and one of the reasons is that well physicists don't really know what this is so just use just use this term that not any that everyone's kind of fuzzy on and therefore you'll kind of get away with it but the way, um, the way that, uh, that Shannon, you know, Shannon is coming up in the early 20th century at a time of this, what we would think of now is this communications revolution, uh, He is coming of age in, let's call it the half century maturation of telephony, long distance communication at a distance.

He's coming up in, let's say, just towards the end of the first century of telegraphy.

I mean, this is a really formative moment in the global history of technology and communications.

And like with many technologies, Very few technologies are born on solid theoretical ground.

So I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about genetic testing and how that sort of figures into the kind of the big part of the story that you're telling here about history.

And I was wondering if you could just talk a little about the kind of the technical definition of what information is and how it's related to entropy just to kind of get people into that frame to think about why the kind of the idea that you're getting at here is actually very central to what history is all about.

Sure.

So entropy is one of these moving targets that has in different arenas been defined in different ways.

And the story, and I think this has been validated, but it has that apocryphal quality, is that when Claude Shannon is having a conversation, and I'm trying to define this sort of measurement of uncertainty inside communication systems, uh and uh it's recommended that he adopt the term entropy and one of the reasons is that well physicists don't really know what this is so just use just use this term that not any that everyone's kind of fuzzy on and therefore you'll kind of get away with it but the way um the way that uh that shannon you know shannon is coming up in the early 20th century at a time of this what we would think of now is this communications revolution uh He is coming of age in, let's call it the half-century maturation of telephony, long-distance communication at a distance.

He's coming up in, let's say, just towards the end of the first century of telegraphy.

I mean, this is a really formative moment in the global history of technology and communications.

And like with many technologies...

So I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about genetic testing and how that sort of figures into the kind of the big part of the story that you're telling here about history.

And I was wondering if you could just talk a little about the kind of the technical definition of what information is and how it's related to entropy, just to kind of get people into that frame to think about why the kind of the idea that you're getting at here is actually very central to what history is all about.

Sure.

So entropy is one of these moving targets that has in different arenas been defined in different ways.

And the story, and I think this has been validated, but it has that apocryphal quality, is that when Claude Shannon is having a conversation, and I'm trying to define this sort of measurement of uncertainty inside communication systems, uh and uh it's recommended that he adopt the term entropy and one of the reasons is that well physicists don't really know what this is so just use just use this term that not any that everyone's kind of fuzzy on and therefore you'll kind of get away with it but the way um the way that, uh, that Shannon, you know, Shannon is coming up in the early 20th century at a time of this, what we would think of now is this communications revolution, uh, He is coming of age in, let's call it the half century maturation of telephony, long distance communication at a distance.

He's coming up in, let's say, just towards the end of the first century of telegraphy.

I mean, this is a really formative moment in the global history of technology and communications.

And like with many technologies, Very few technologies are born on solid theoretical ground.

So I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about genetic testing and how that sort of figures into the kind of the big part of the story that you're telling here about history.

Um, and I was wonder if you could just talk a little about the kind of the, the, the technical definition of what information is and how it's related to entropy, just to kinda get people into that frame to think about why the, the kind of the idea that you're getting at here is actually very central to what history is all about.

Sure.

So entropy is one of these moving targets that, uh, has in different, you know, in different arenas been defined in different ways.

And the story, and I, I, I think this has been validated, but it has that apocryphal quality, is that when Claude Shannon, uh, uh, es- is having a conversation on, you know, I'm trying to define the sort of measurement of uncertainty inside communication systems, uh, and, uh, it's recommended that he adopt the term entropy.

And one of the reasons is that, well, physicists don't really know what this is, so just use, just use this term that not any, that everyone's kind of fuzzy on, and therefore you'll kind of get away with it.

But the way, um, the way that, uh, that Shannon...

You know, Shannon is coming up in the early 20th century at a time of this, what we would think of now as this communications revolution.

So I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about genetic testing and how that sort of figures into the kind of the, the big part of the story that you're telling here about history.

And I was wondering if you could just talk a little about the kind of the technical definition of what information is and how it's related to entropy just to kind of get people into that frame to think about why the kind of the idea that you're getting at here is actually very central to what history is all about.

Sure.

So entropy is one of these moving targets that has in different arenas been defined in different ways.

And the story, and I think this has been validated, but it has that apocryphal quality, is that when Claude Shannon is having a conversation, and I'm trying to define this sort of measurement of uncertainty inside communication systems, uh and uh it's recommended that he adopt the term entropy and one of the reasons is that well physicists don't really know what this is so just use just use this term that not any that everyone's kind of fuzzy on and therefore you'll kind of get away with it but the way um the way that, uh, that Shannon, you know, Shannon is coming up in the early 20th century at a time of this, what we would think of now is this communications revolution, uh, He is coming of age in, let's call it the half century maturation of telephony, long distance communication at a distance.

He's coming up in, let's say, just towards the end of the first century of telegraphy.

I mean, this is a really formative moment in the global history of technology and communications.

And like with many technologies, Very few technologies are born on solid theoretical ground.

So I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about genetic testing and how that sort of figures into the kind of the big part of the story that you're telling here about history.

And at what point did you say, wow, this is really actually quite a crisis that we have going on that we then I need to reconstruct this life, these lives?

Yeah, I mean, I think so.

There's sort of two timelines to the book, which I think is always true of every book that's ever been written.

There's the timeline of the book that the book itself suggests, you know, so in this case, I have, I've had people ask me or imagine that I kind of started writing this book when my father died, which in a certain sense is true, but in a broader span, the book began about 24 years ago.

There's an episode in the book I talk about of being in grad school at Columbia and the sort of hitting me like an epiphany, the process by which all of my work on my dissertation could come crashing down.

And not something like a conflagration, a fire in my apartment, nothing so dramatic.

If I were to have misplaced 20 of my index cards, then the entire edifice of my dissertation and therefore my career would have come down.

And so, oh, gosh, what's number one advice for that sort of situation?

... s- simply that I, I hit a key and instead of getting a letter or a stroke as you might be tempted to do for a written language like Chinese or Japanese, that it might give you a, a whole sentence or a whole phrase?

What you're doing when you type or when you input in Chinese is you're giving the computerA set of instructions or criteria.

You're giving qualities of the Chinese characters that you want.

The computer is taking that information and saying, you know, saying, "Okay, well, if this is what the user wants, let me go into computer memory and bring back all of the Chinese characters that match that criteria, and I'm gonna present those options to the user in a little pop-up menu," this little screen that follows you along as you types and constantly, dynamically gives you different options.

So I'm typing in the letter B, then the letter E, then the letter I, and let's say I'm using a phonetic input system in Chinese.

This is a, a way of s- writing out the sound of a character.

What that, what that input method editor, the computer program, is doing is with every single keystroke saying, "Okay, what characters do I have, Chinese characters do I have in memory that begin with the sound of B? Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, now he typed in E.

Uh, how do you compare the information input speed that I can achieve using a Western language with using a Chinese computer?

So, uh, how, how would you respond?

Well, I, I mean, everyday life is, at its core, a study of this awful, amazing, horrifying, n- never-ending surprise of what it means to be born, and live and die as a human.

And even if, at the end of the day, an AI is orders of magnitude smarter, AI, just by definition, cannot suffer and rejoice and live and die in quite the same way that, that humans can.

In the same way that we cannot live and die and suffer and comprehend and feel the way an octopus can.

It's gonna, no, it's, uh, I mean...

This is gonna get weird down to the fabric, but fast-forward this, you know, 20, 30 years, if we're still around at a sort of climate change level, when another future human is sitting in this fabric-altered world, it will still be a group of humans rejoicing, suffering.

Th- like, it will still be that condition.

And so, it's kind of a, it's kind of a liber- I, for me it's a, like a little bit of a, uh, libratory time.

However, i- in China, thi- this goes way beyond search engine suggestions.

In Microsoft Word, this is not a search field.

This is, like, Microsoft Word, and you can say, "Okay, in the news today, some star has done something terrible and fallen from grace," and so some input user is starting to enter the name of this befallen pop star.

The system is smart enough to say, "Okay, this user has never entered this person's name before, but up in the cloud, millions of people are entering this particular person's name.

Let's give this local user that suggestion based upon what users elsewhere in the cloud are doing."

(laughs)

And, and, and, uh, you know, and, and post-futuristic.

Because right now it's guessing what the writer already wants to say.